It was an ordinary day. Reading in my daily newspaper about a nearby 20 year old Elizabethtown College student, Eric Schubert, helping to solve the oldest cold case murder in the state of Pennsylvania as well as the fourth-oldest cold case murder in the United States. He helped the police solve the case using genetic genealogy.
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| Eric Schubert |
Seems that Eric, a history major, is a top-notch investigator who specializes in genetic genealogy and had volunteered to help the Pennsylvania State Police with the case, if they wanted his services. It was back in 1964, almost 40 years before Eric was born, that 9-year-old Marise Ann Chiverella was abducted as she walked to school in the city of Hazleton, Pennsylvania. Her body was found the same afternoon in a nearby coal pit.  |
| Marise Ann Chiverella |
She had been raped and strangled. More than 230 police investigators had worked on the case at one time or another. One day Eric was reading about the case and called the police station and offered his services to the State Police. He was sure they wouldn't want the help of a 20 year-old kid, but they surprised him and accepted his offer. He worked side-by-side with police investigators. Eric claimed the case was the hardest genealogy case he had ever faced in his young life. Well, they traced the killer back to a fellow named James Paul Forte, a bartender with a record of violent sexual assault, who died ini 1980 at the age of 38. |
| Pix of James Paul Forte |
Forte was 22 at the time and had no known connections with the young girl which made it harder to solve the case. Generations of State Police worked on the case, but with no results. By now the little girl's parents had both died, but her siblings were still live. When a perfect match was made by the police and Eric, the killers body was exhumed and found that his DNA was a perfect match of the DNA left on the jacket of the victim. Over 230 members of the police were involved in the probe at one time or another. Eventually new DNA technology established a distant family connection to Forte and with Eric's help they were able to get their culprit. The little girl's siblings said they had so many precious memories of their sister and knew the guy would one day be caught. And now, thanks to the Pennsylvania State Police and 20-year-old genetic genealogist Eric Schubert, one of the biggest unsolved murder crimes has finally been solved. Eric may face a future in genetic genealogy in helping solve other cold-case murders. I certainly would want him on my side! It was another extraordinary day in the life of n ordinary guy.
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